{"id":251,"date":"2014-02-21T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bsac406.weebly.com\/dive-reports\/victorias-secrets1"},"modified":"2014-02-21T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T09:00:00","slug":"victorias-secrets1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":"Victoria’s Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"
I was one of those in Abu Dhabi last Friday to see the Stones so I wasn\u2019t on the boat. It would have been nice to go diving as well but you can\u2019t always get what you want (ouch!). Derek has kindly put a few words together:<\/div>\n
With the legendary Rolling Stones performing in Abu Dhabi, Friday\u2019s dive boat carried fewer numbers than usual but were no less enthusiastic about another dive on the Victoria Star, \u2018the wreck that just keeps giving\u2019. After prepping the boat, Mike \u2018the Silver Fox\u2019 Antony, \u20182m Marc\u2019, Brian \u2018Larky\u2019 Larkin, Geoff and Derek set out for Al Khan on a bright February morning. Also joining this merry band was Derek\u2019s non-diving brother Keith who was on holiday in the UAE.
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<\/span>On checking in with the Coast Guard one of their fine members boarded SP312 to check the transponder was switched on \u2026. unlike the officer who failed to notice he had only five ID\u2019s yet there were six on the boat. The honourable gentleman who did such a fine job of gathering the IDs had in fact omitted to pass his own over! The beauty of the Victoria Star being so close to shore is the short journey time, just as well as the steering was largely unresponsive due to a lack of oil to support the hydraulic steering mechanism. Regardless of this, \u20182m Marc\u2019 successfully manoeuvred the boat over the wreck with the anchor landing in the cargo hold just in front of the bridge.
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<\/span>Geoff, Brian and \u20182m Marc\u2019 were first over the side into a fast running current and descended in 21 C water. The dive plan was to search for the ships\u2019 records further to discovery of the fire plan the previous week. \u20182m Marc\u2019 managed to locate some interesting documents including the ships Class certificate and crew list while Geoff managed to find the second of three fire plans in a cylinder located on the Captain\u2019s Deck, starboard side. Mike and Derek on the second wave also had a successful dive and found an Aldis lamp in relatively good condition after seven months underwater. Still not a great deal of marine life evident apart from the increasing number of barnacles and a solitary bat fish.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Brian decided to skip the second dive and after a suitable surface interval, a spot of fishing by Keith and a sea snake sighting on the surface, the second dives followed a similar pattern to the first with further exploration of the vessels\u2019 interior and Captains\u2019 cabin. Back at the club some careful handling of the retrieved documents enabled photographic evidence to be obtained before they sadly disintegrated apart from a couple of certificates that had been laminated.
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<\/span>A few photos and documents are attached<\/em>
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This email comes to you from Jeddah, KSA, where I\u2019ve come for a few days to check out a sinking quay wall. Although Saudi is superficially similar to the Emirates, you do feel the conservatism of the place that Sharjah, for all its foibles, only hints at. Walking round the local shopping mall, I saw no other westerners and I estimated about 60 \u2013 65% of the women wearing a niqab. This I suppose, still leaves 35 \u2013 40% with uncovered faces and there was no obvious \u201cofficial\u201d presence trying to correct that. Almost all the shop assistants are male aside from a few shops with signs: \u201cfamilies only\u201d. The mall sold almost nothing apart from clothes, shoes and jewellery although this at least gave me an opportunity to buy a few shirts from M&S. I\u2019m not a fan of shopping malls but there\u2019s no other entertainment around here anyway. And Jeddah is liberal by Saudi standards \u2013 one wonders what Riyadh must be like.
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<\/span>But I digress. The Dive Bar will be open as normal \u2013 I sincerely hope to see you there for a drink!
IH<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was one of those in Abu Dhabi last Friday to see the Stones so I wasn\u2019t on the boat. It would have been nice to go diving as well but you can\u2019t always get what you want (ouch!). Derek has kindly put a few words together: With the legendary Rolling Stones performing in Abu […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dive-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bsac.zelta.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}